After Rodney Reimann's adoptive parents died in 2002, he journeyed into finding his biological roots. He discovered his mother was an Ojibwe Indian and he was certified as a member of the tribe in 2008.

Bernice Gardner looks at one of the few photographs from her childhood with her siblings, from left, Carol, Mary, Chris and herself.

Bernice Gardner of Irvine still gets emotional while recounting details of her abandonment by her mother some 40 years ago and the "horrors of the foster system."

Back row from left: Georgia, in Mary's arms, and Bernice. Front row from left: Carol, Tracy, Chris and Patti.

Bernice Gardner, center, at her wedding in 1981 with sisters from left: Mary, Carol, Tracy and Patti.

Bill Hoffer and Marianne Fallsfeather abandoned their eight children in 1968. At that time, Fallsfeather was pregnant with a ninth child that they gave to a bartender friend.

Bernice Gardner recently filled a missing link to her family tree -- brother Rodney Reimann of Forest Falls. Gardner and her seven siblings were abandoned by their parents. Her mother was pregnant with Rodney and gave him up as well. The two contacted each other several months ago.

A family tree painted by Adorae Lester of Huntington Beach. On Dec. 18, Bernice Gardner, gave this family tree to her long-lost brother Rodney Reinmann. Reinman was not yet born when their parents abandoned eight children in 1968. A few months later, Rodney was adopted out after his birth.

Bernice Gardner and her brother Rodney Reimann finally meet after 40 years of being apart. Gardner and her seven siblings were abandoned and sent off to different families. Reimann was born later and given up for adoption at birth.

Rodney Reimann's older sister Bernice Gardner of Irvine adjusts his Santa hat at his Forest Falls home, where he hosted a Christmas party. Reimann, 41, was recently united with Gardner, 52. Their mom was pregnant with him when his eight siblings were abandoned and they were all raised, including Reimann, by different adoptive parents.

Bernice Gardner gives her brother Rodney Reimann directions to her Irvine home where the two will meet for the first time in 40 years.

Rodney Reimann opens a Christmas gift, a stuffed animal, from his sister Bernice Gardner, 52, at left. She said: "The bear represents something I would have given you when you were born. I would have been 10." The siblings were abandoned by their parents and had never met until several months ago.

Bernice Gardner, 52, of Irvine and Rodney Reimann, 41, of Forest Falls, recently found each other after a lifetime apart. Their parents abandoned Gardner and her seven siblings. Reimann was given up after he was born. Gardner's grandson James Gardner, 10, at right, is the same age Gardner was when her mother left.

Bernice Gardner of Irvine finds joy in plants and flowers. It offers solace from a past riddled with pain. Her parents abandoned her and her seven siblings in 1968, and she never saw her mother again.

Rodney Reimann at about age 3 on his pony Molly. He was raised on a 6,400-acre horse ranch in Yucaipa, his "playground" as a child.

Rodney Reimann at age 5 with his adoptive mother, Velma Reimann.

A yellowed newspaper article from a Yucaipa newspaper shows Rodney Reimann as a teen with his adoptive mother and father. The caption reads: "Bill and Velma Reimann and son Ronald are very busy these days working at the new equestrian center..."

Rodney Reimann's adoptive father, William Reimann, died in 2002. In his eulogy, Rodney said, "My dad was everything. The cowboy, the mechanic, the deal-maker, the philosopher and the teacher." Yet Rodney always had a yearning to find his biological family.

Rodney Reimann holds a picture of himself as a teenager with his adoptive parents, William and Velma Reimann. His left arm is tattooed with an American flag in flames. He says it symbolizes "the atrocities that befell the native people."

Rodney Reimann, 41, looks for his adoptive father William's grave stone at Riverside National Cemetery, where he was buried eight years ago.

Rodney Reimann's adoptive father and mother died a few weeks apart and were buried side-by-side at Riverside National Cemetery.

Rodney Reimann said he had the perfect childhood, growing up on a 6,400-acre horse ranch in Yucaipa with his adoptive parents. But he says he felt like an "outsider" and dreamed early on of finding his "real family."

Rodney Reimann with his BMW motorcycle, a change from his usual Harley. He finds peace and solitude while riding.

Mary Hoffer's mother died a homeless woman years after abandoning all of her nine kids. Hoffer says she can imagine her mother roaming alleys like this one in Long Beach near where she died.

Bernice Gardner takes part in choir practice at CrossPoint Baptist Church in Huntington Beach. She sings "Where Joy and Sorrow Meet," an appropriate song given her past of being abandoned by her mother and then her recent joyous connection with a brother she had never met.

As a young adult, he drifted. Ranching. Riding horses. Always searching for happiness around the next corner.

Maybe it was wishful thinking, but he often dreamed he had a family out there, somewhere, pulling for him. And on those occasions when something went right, he imagined them cheering him on, sharing his joy.

Still, he never sought that family. Never made a big deal. Then, about a year before his dad died, Reimann bumped into an old friend who knew a private investigator.

She can find anyone, the friend said.

Reimann had always been told his biological father was gone and his one blood brother was killed in a car crash.

Find my mother, he replied.

A week later, Reimann was handed his mother’s death certificate. He tucked it in a drawer. His own little secret.

As he reread it now, it appeared everyone in his life was gone.

“There was no one left to find,” he says, “except for me.”

He couldn’t have been more wrong.

Records unsealed

All he wanted was a connection to someone, roots.

Using information on his mom’s death certificate, he’d traced Marianne Fallsfeather to the Mille Lacs Band of the Ojibwe Chippewa tribe in Minnesota.

To join, he’d need a document that might as well be on another planet – his original birth certificate, which he’d never seen.

“Again, I’m at a dead end.”

But the thirst to know ourselves is a powerful thing. So Reimann drove to the Department of Children’s Services in Long Beach, where he was born. Was sent to the Department of Children’s Services in Los Angeles, where the records had been transferred. Then to a musty basement of file cabinets in Santa Fe Springs, where they’d been stored.

Those files are under seal, he was finally told. You must petition the court to open adoption files.

Over the next four years, he walked through 19 superior courts.

“I felt adrift,” he says. “I was scrambling for something solid.”

Slowly, his marriage dissolved. And his need for a connection in this world drove him to the Hells Angels, which he tried to join. They turned him away, too. Nothing helped.

Finally, in 2008, a judge unsealed his files. Inside was his birth certificate.

With that, he became a member of the Ojibwe Chippewa tribe. Reimann was connected to something bigger than himself.

And that, he thought, was the end of the story. Until two years later, when the Bureau of Indian Affairs called to probate some land that his mother had inherited. The land didn’t appear to be much. But the call left him breathless.

You know you have siblings? the woman on the phone asked.

“Yes,” Reimann said. “One brother. But he died in a car accident.”

No. You have several sisters. And they’re alive.

First contact

Five sisters, in fact. Living. Breathing. Sharing his blood.

He’d waited so long for this. But now he was scared.

What if they don’t accept me?

The Bureau of Indian Affairs offered to pass Reimann’s contact information to his sisters, but that’s all it could do. So he tried that, and waited.

Until one night he came home from work to find his answering machine blinking.

“It’s surreal to hear you have voice mail, like a thousand times before. And listen to the voice of your sister,” he says.

“It’s indescribable. You’d expect a thing like that to come to you on the wings of a Pegasus. It came to me on a voice mail!”

Somehow, she forgot to leave her number. So he waited some more.

Until another sister emailed: Are you my brother?

First, they traded emails. Then photos. Then one Sunday night, instant messages.

I can’t imagine how you feel, she wrote.

There are no words, he typed back.

Here’s a hug, she wrote. We should call.

Within a minute, he was dialing – his sister. His honest-to-God sister.

Hello?

A lingering darkness

What Reimann would learn about his birth family was painful.

On good days, the kids got presents – bikes, bunnies, Barbies for the girls, a new puppy for the boys.

But on bad days?

“There was a lot of terror,” says one of Reimann’s birth sisters, Bernice Gardner, 52, of Irvine, about growing up in the family’s Carson home.

“We’d huddle in the corner listening to (our dad) beat our mother. She’d be screaming and we’d hear the thuds, all huddled and crying and trying our best not to hear her scream.”

Sometimes 11-year-old Mary, the oldest, would hide in the eaves – because of what Dad did in the past. After most fights, their father would kick their mother out of the house, then hit Bill, 8, one of the middle kids, for calling the police.

Such was life for the eight children of William Hoffer and Marianne Fallsfeather, his common-law wife, in 1968 – shortly before Rod Reimann was born.

Reimann would learn that his older siblings remembered good times, too – singing with Mom, playing rocket ship on the stairs, putting on musicals for the neighbors. But those times were overshadowed by the darkness that crept over the house that summer.

Fueled by alcohol, the abuse escalated. So when William Hoffer finally left for good, no one really cared.

No matter what, I’ll never leave you, Mom promised. And if we ever separate, I’ll get you back.

Then, one day, she didn’t come home either.

Abandoned

She’d be gone overnight. Or a few days. She said she was working or with friends.

One day, Mary ran after her and caught her a few blocks from home.

“I was crying,” says Mary Hoffer, 53, of Long Beach. “And shaking. I was panicking. I said, ‘I can’t do this.’ Because I had all these kids to take care of. And I was 11.”

Mom bought Mary a Pepsi and calmly walked her home.

“Then she opened the door by grabbing the back of my hair and (shoving) my forehead through it,” Mary says.

Soon the eight children – from 11 years old to 18 months – were abandoned altogether.

Bernice, 9, the second oldest, asked what they all wondered: What did we do? Doesn’t she love us?

For weeks that summer, the children lived alone in the house, with no adults coming or going.

One day, the phone stopped working. One day, the gas stopped working. One day, 8-year-old Bill chased Bernice down the street – with a butcher knife. Panic set in. Anger. Things that children aren’t equipped to deal with alone.

Eventually the toilet plugged up. And the food ran out.

The older kids visited friends at mealtime. It eased their hunger but not their shame. Or embarrassment. Or guilt.

“You carry that with you for years,” says Bernice, who would return home thinking, “Oh, I ate, but they didn’t.”

Finally, the police arrived and took pictures, conducted interviews and called an ambulance for the two youngest who were dehydrated and malnourished. They were starving to death.

They believed. Even as they grew into adults and married and had their own children. Even as disappointment boiled into despair. Or rage.

When nurses placed Bernice’s first child in her arms, she wept – in pain.

“I was so mad,” she says. As she held her baby, she yelled out for her mother: “Where are you? You should be here. We’re all so excited. You should be here to celebrate with us.'”

Too often, however, there was too little to celebrate. After Bill’s death in 1987 came Chris’ death in 1988 and Tracy’s death in 2002.

All by their own hand.

So, when a call came last year, from family no less, no one expected good news.

Stranger connection

When people hear about Bernice’s past, the reaction is always the same. Shock. Disbelief. Amazement. You need to tell your story, they say.

But she never felt she could – until last spring, when her phone rang.

Hello, this is the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Bernice knew her mom grew up on a Minnesota Indian reservation. She and her sisters once tried to enroll. But they had no paperwork or other information, no idea to which tribe Mom belonged. Their attempts to find out went nowhere.

The caller was probating the estate of a Marianne Fallsfeather who had inherited some land. When Bernice hung up, she knew two things: Her long-lost mother was dead. And her long-lost baby brother – now named Rod Reimann – was alive. And he wanted Bernice to call.

It was her turn for shock, disbelief and amazement.

She stared at the phone number in her hands.

“You’re stuck. Like, what do I do? What do I say? ‘OK, I need to call him.’ And you put it down. Then you pick it up and say, ‘I need to call him.’ And you put it down.”

She did this every day for a month. Until the Bureau of Indian Affairs called back and said Reimann was still waiting. This time, Bernice got his email address.

She sat at her computer and a lifetime of tears and words came to her.

“I knew he was born, but I never, ever thought I’d meet him,” she says and runs for a tissue.

She has warned him of the family history.

“It may not be what you dreamed of,” she said.

“It doesn’t matter,” he replied. “It’s my family. It’s mine!”

In 1968, William Hoffer and Marianne Fallsfeather abandoned eight children. Then they gave their ninth child, a newborn, to a bar owner.

Somehow, that discarded newborn has found his way home.

He is right outside. Bernice sees him. Runs into his arms. Their embrace spans 42 years of pain and separation. It is long and mostly silent, punctuated by gasps and laughter and tears.

“I didn’t think anybody was still left,” he says, finally, brushing her hair with his hand.

“We’ve always loved you,” she says.

Yet not everyone is ready to welcome him back.

A shadow

Devastated.

That’s how Mary Hoffer felt the day she learned her baby brother was alive.

Because it’s also the day she learned Mom had died.

Like her sisters, Hoffer still clung to her mother’s promise – that one day she’d return. Suddenly, in one call last April, Hoffer learned Mom was never returning. It was life-changing.

“It took away a lot that kept me going,” Hoffer says.

Especially news that her mother died an alcoholic on Skid Row in Long Beach, a city where three of her daughters lived.

“All my life, she’d been right here,” Hoffer says. “I kept thinking, ‘Why didn’t she contact us? How could she do that?’ It angered me.”

Some feel it had to be embarrassment. Or shame.

Maybe just a glance from us was all their mom needed, one sister told Bernice. But when I saw people like that, I’d cross the street to avoid them. I wonder if I passed her.

One thing is certain. The abandonment took a terrible toll: Three children took their own lives. One sits in prison. Each must deal with the past.

What upsets Bernice is how easily their parents discarded a newborn – after abandoning eight others.

“They didn’t see the anguish we went through,” she says, struggling to get the words out. “They didn’t hear the crying. They simply washed their hands and walked away.”

It’s created a special place in her heart for her lost brother – the Christmas present she heard about so long ago.

“You were always the one that I had a longing for,” she told him when they met. “I wondered where you were. What you were doing.”

A few months later, Hoffer calls. She has grieved for Mom and wants to meet her baby brother, too.

The tree

It is a Christmas party like any other.

With one large gift like any other. But it is not.

“Go on,” Mary Hoffer says. “Let us see it.”

Reimann has invited some 40 friends and neighbors to his Forest Falls home in the San Bernardino mountains.

“I want to share a story with you,” he says, introducing his two sisters for the first time.

After punch and pie and singing, he opens a teddy bear from Bernice.

“I would’ve given you that when you were born,” she says, tearing up as usual, “if I’d been there.”

Then he opens family photos from Thanksgiving, when he met Mary for the first time.

“They say when you die, your family and everyone who loves you will be waiting for you in heaven,” Reimann says. “The closest I could feel to that was with my sisters on Thanksgiving. It was happening on Earth.”

Finally he lifts the big gift with the bow.

“Better not be socks,” he says, tearing the paper.

He stares, too choked up to speak. Sighs.

He holds a painting, done in simple, elegant brushstrokes.

“It’s a tree you thought you had no part of,” Mary says.

A family tree. Each of nine branches bearing a child’s name – including his.

Rod Reimann’s search has carried a cost: Nine years. A failed marriage. The sad truth about his parents. And a family that still bears the scars of abandonment.

Of the three sisters he’s yet to meet, one is in prison and two aren’t ready to meet him.

“They may never be ready,” Reimann says. “I’m OK with that. They’re my sisters and I love them – for them.”

But his journey also brought a joy he never thought possible.

“It has a ripple effect in your life,” he says. “The air is crisper. The colors are sharper. It’s like I was blind yesterday, and now I can see.”

And that ripple – emanating from a discarded newborn so long ago – is widening.

He, Bernice and Mary plan a road trip to their mother’s reservation. They plan to find cousins. And possibly visit their imprisoned sister.

“I hope the rest of us can come together,” says Mary, the family caretaker.

Who knows?

Already the wanderer has become a family man. The cowboy has become an Indian. The lost soul has found a home.

Reimann loves riding his motorcycle. No distraction, only the wind. But he no longer casts his gaze to the next corner.

He just rides.

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